#67 Ben Greenfield on Stem Cells and Longevity

Ben Greenfield (0:00)

I've kind of reversed aging biologically. My chronological age is 37, and currently my biological age based on telomere measurements is 20

You should structure your day so that by the end of the day, exercise is an option, not a necessity, because we know from data, the amount of turbulence and the amount of resistance to blood flow that occurs from a hard workout after being sedentary all day long could actually increase your risk for high blood pressure or for heart attacks or for other issues during exercise. So the presence of mild, hormetic stressors spread throughout the day, including sunlight radiation, exposure to heat, exposure to cold, exposure to hunger, exposure to digestive stress, or body stress from the intake of Body Mind Empowerment.

SPEAKER_2 (0:49)

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Siim Land (0:55)

Everything the body needs.

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Siim Land (1:00)

Welcome to the Body Mind Empowerment Podcast. I'm host Siim Land and our guest today is Ben Greenfield. Ben is one of the leading experts in the world of biohacking and health. He has one of the top fitness podcasts called The Ben Greenfield Fitness Show. He does public speaking, runs Spartan races, writes books, and does many other things related to optimal living.

Ben, I'm glad that you could make it to the show.

Ben Greenfield (1:26)

Hey, thanks for having me on, dude.

Siim Land (1:29)

Definitely. I can see that you're using your walking treadmill desk.

So are there any other biohacks that you're currently doing?

Ben Greenfield (1:38)

Like right now, I'm walking on the treadmill.

Sure. I could name two. I've got an ISIS M1 PEMF device on my wrist because I actually have a race this weekend and I'm dealing with a wrist sprain from a little car accident. These PEMF devices are really good at shutting down chronic inflammation and improving healing of bone and tissue. So I'm doing Pulse Electromagnetic Field Therapy on my wrist. And what else would I be doing right now that I could tell you?

Breakfast. Yeah, breakfast this morning was just a couple servings of ketone esters and about 20 grams of essential amino acids. So, you know, kind of sort of in a fasted state, you know, that allows you to maintain a fasted state and be somewhat anabolic, or at least allows you to keep your appetite satiated, get some of the anti-inflammatory benefits of the ketone esters and also some of the neurotransmitter and the gut healing and joint healing benefits of the amino acids. And then my workout this morning was a little hypoxic training session on my on my bike with a unit called Alive O2, which basically extracts air from the room and concentrates it in an oxygen concentrator. And then you can, with the flip of a switch, kind of flip back and forth between low ox, excuse me, low oxygen and high oxygen. And then for the blood building benefits, I like to got to heat myself up going back and forth from hypoxia to hyperoxia with some intervals. And then I finish up with about 20 minutes or so in the infrared sauna, which I came out of about a half hour ago and do a quick cold plunge to make sure I'm not sweating all morning.

So, yeah, those are a few of the little things I was up to today.

Siim Land (3:41)

Yeah, another day at the office.

Ben Greenfield (3:44)

What's happened?

Siim Land (3:44)

Another day at the office.

Ben Greenfield (3:47)

Yeah, yeah, another day at the office.

Siim Land (3:51)

Living the dream. But you've been recently been doing a lot of these other crazier or, let's say, less conventional biofacts as well, like stem cells, NAD injections and some other things related to dick enhancements and so on. So can you do you want to talk about it or?

Ben Greenfield (4:13)

What do you want to know?

Siim Land (4:15)

Let's maybe like talk about the stem cells because I feel like those are the biggest ones that people would be interested in in terms of like anti-aging and longevity.

Ben Greenfield (4:24)

Sure. What do you want to know?

Siim Land (4:26)

Well, can you maybe give a brief overview about the procedure of what kind of an experiment did you do and what were the results?

Ben Greenfield (4:34)

Well, I've done a little bit with stem cells. You know, the stem cell theory of aging is that you have niches, tissue niches where stem cells reside and that as you age, your pluripotent stem cells become more and more exhausted in terms of their availability. And so by replacing those with either autologous stem cells from your own body, such as your bone or your fat or using a non-autologous stem cell source, such as umbilical or amniotic or even placental stem cells, you can replace those stem cells and enhance quality of life as you age. And furthermore, if stem cells are injected into an area where there is tissue damage, such as a joint, they assist with repair and recovery of the joint. Or even if they are allowed to cross the blood-brain barrier, which they normally wouldn't do, but you can actually you can induce temporary blood-brain barrier permeability via something like the sugar alcohol mannitol does a good job with that. You can inject that and then inject stem cells and have them cross the blood-brain barrier to work in neural tissue. So there's a lot of uses for something like stem cells.